"Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a farm and live entirely surrounded by cows–and china."

– Charles Dickens

May 22, 2012

It's Official: We're a Farm Family

We bought our first land on our ridge almost five years ago and have added to, and around, it in the past four years since we have lived here (our New Hampshire house sold in September 2008, remarkably the week of the big financial crash, after we had moved to Kentucky in January of that year). We'll never be Kentucky natives but we have assimilated to the point where our neighbors, and many other local friends, seem to accept us, at least, and sometimes even like us, and, well, it just really feels like home despite how very much we are our own people from a different part of the world.

Taking a break from first haying to visit with neighbors new and old.

In the spring, when the weather is temperate, the flora magnificent and birdsong glorious––and it's not too hot––it is the easiest time of year to feel at home here. The real test is always at the holidays: the past few have been a bit melancholy and filled with longing for Christmases past. But I really do feel I've moved beyond that now, too, and having met some other "transplants" to the region also helps that immeasurably. An old friend––a pro at moving a lot––once told me that it takes about five years to feel at home in a new place. I'm beginning to think she's right.

When you move at midlife, as we did, far away from our familiar, from our own family home places (which we thought we'd grow old in––one of them, at least––but sold), and from people who knew us, well, these things take time. But moving here will prove to perhaps be one of the best decisions we will have made in our marriage.

Yours truly and my often unsung husband Temple on the tractor.

I haven't blogged in a while because we've been busy on the farm and because our daughter Adriana (or, Addie for short) has been visiting on a long stretch between seasonal resort jobs back in Vermont. It's been a pleasure to have her here and some more female energy around the place (heifer cows and laying hens just don't count) and we're proud of what she's accomplished on her own in four years: she deserves this rural respite. She's taken over the care and feeding of the chickens while she's been here and is just a generally great presence (who tolerates her ornery kinfolk, especially her perimenopausal mother, sometimes cranky father and very rambunctious brothers). Being altogether again for the longest stretch in five years has been galvanizing for our family: a needed dose of togetherness in a weary world.

Henry and Eli have been a huge help with haying again this year and they can drive the tractors and operate equipment like seasoned pros. We couldn't be on this farm without them and they are happy to help out: Henry, especially, has a real knack for staying with a task. At 14.5 he is taller than all of us and almost as tall as his father. Both are learning the value of responsibility on a farm and that they are a valuable part of helping to raise and tend to the pastured beef cattle on our farm. Most of the time we seem to have happy cows and happy boys.

In the past few months, in no particular order, we finished our first haying, the boys had their last week of school before a nice long summer break, we put up quarts of strawberries for the freezer, put in a garden and lots of flower pots, helped birth some cows, ran the farm (thank you, Henry!) while my husband and youngest son were in Colorado for over a week, got some paid writing assignments, and I have applied for (yet another potential) job off-ridge that would be a wonderful opportunity for the coming academic year, at least, and return me to my vocational roots. In short, I've been doing just about everything except blogging. I do have a significant "back blog" so I'll be posting more here and there in the weeks ahead to catch up with things around the farm.

In the meantime, you come back when you're ready!

Catherine

A few weeks ago I called our county road agent about getting
some tractor and cattle signs placed at each end of our small county lane
(where our farm now straddles quite nicely). People don't often drive down it
but as we have cattle in the road on any given day, and tractors,
well, it seemed a good idea. I hate to add to any unnecessary sign pollution
but hey, they were free. And kudos to Pulaski County: they put them up the very day!

3 comments:

Wow. It's been FOUR years?! I'm happy you are feeling at home and settled but boy, we sure do miss you up here in New England. The boys are so grown-up and Addie looks fantastic. As do you and Temple. It's wonderful that things have come together so well.

I love the photos of the farm! It's just beautiful. But what is MOST impressive is that you got 2 road signs put up on the day you requested them. Up here, it would have taken months of applications, public hearings and a couple of zoning board meetings. (Okay, maybe not that bad, but it would not have happened so quickly or so easily.)

Farmwife at Midlife

"May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand." – Irish Blessing

Our Beloved Edgar

Abandoned by his mother on a cold December morning in 2011 (on my husband's birthday), Edgar was bottle-fed and gently raised. He is one of our bulls but has been given a life-long stay of execution on our farm. He loves clover and head rubs and digs heifers.

Catherine Pond

I'm not Marjorie Main, but I do come quite close on occasion. Farm life at midlife is fun, often fretful and always exhilarating: "every, every minute," to quote Emily Gibbs in OUR TOWN. [Click on image for more info.]

I Still Love to Read

My mother and me c. 1965 underneath a big old elm tree at my grandparents' house in Ohio.

Yes, I wrote the book on pantries ~

Welcome to our Farm !

I am now a farmwife. Make that a farmwife-in-training: not the most organized and with heaps still to learn. We've moved - my husband, two boys and myself - from an historic New England family manse to a doublewide on a ridge in Kentucky. Just imagine The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse: but we've kept the antiques. [We even have a 'cement pond' - a large cattle tank.] It is total testosterone world - even our dogs are male. [Our daughter visits from Colorado...and there are plenty of hens and heifers, dogs and cats, and even the occasional deer or two.]

I have written In the Pantrysince 2005, my first blog, around my book, The Pantry. Farmwife at Midlife is blog about our new lives on our farm and my journey to the western Appalachian foothills at midlife: with all of those wild, and wonderful, peaks and valleys. We love our new home and feel blessed to be a part of this place– "What we need is here." [WBerry]

Does it get any better?

Click on Ma and Pa Kettle for 'What I've Learned So Far'

Epiphany Moment

"She had turned her back upon them all and no awful fate had overtaken her; instead, she had taken a firm hold upon life and made of it a fine, even glittering, success; and this is a thing which is not easily forgiven." ~ from the novel, Early Autumn (1926), by Louis Bromfield

Farmwife Credits

• Every farmwife needs a farmer and mine had the vision of Kentucky from the start and, thankfully, brought me along for the ride. We met nearly 40 years ago in a hay field and have been married for 16–I believe we're stuck with each other.

• I am indebted to my neighbor on the next ridge, Margaret Jasper, for introducing me to this vernacular salutation from the Kentucky hills: You come back when you're ready!

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More from Wendell Berry

"So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts....Practice resurrection."The Country of Marriage

"I see that the life of this place is always emerging beyond expectation or prediction or typicality, that it is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated. And this is when I see that this life is a miracle, absolutely worth having, absolutely worth saving. We are alive within mystery, by miracle." Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

"And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home."

"The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

"Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire."Farming: a Handbook